The Sequoia Project, an independent advocate for nationwide health data sharing, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this month by announcing that its various interoperability initiatives have grown by health organization participants, by geographic reach, and by the sheer number of health records exchanged electronically.
Initiatives under the parent company Sequoia Project such as Carequality, eHealth Exchange, and RSNA Image Share Validation “have grown in every conceivable way over the past year,” the organization said today in a press release.
Currently, the Carequality Interoperability Framework is widely implemented by more than 19,000 clinics, 800 hospitals, and 250,000 providers. This marks a dramatic increase from one year ago, when Carequality published the nation’s first interoperability framework for trusted health data exchange between and among networks, and 10 pioneering organizations signed up to implement. The Carequality framework provides a unified health data sharing agreement that outlines how health records are shared. More recently, an agreement between Carequality and CommonWell Health Alliance will make CommonWell a Carequality implementer on behalf of its members and their clients, enabling CommonWell subscribers to engage in health information exchange through directed queries with any Carequality participant.
Another Sequoia initiative realizing year-over-year growth is the eHealth Exchange, the largest health data sharing network of its kind in the US, officials attest. The eHealth Exchange network, which began more than eight years ago as an initiative of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), has grown steadily over the past several years under the stewardship of The Sequoia Project, achieving a 35 percent growth in participation last year alone. To date, the eHealth Exchange connects participants in all 50 states, including four federal agencies, 65 percent of all U.S. hospitals, 46 regional and state health information exchange (HIEs), 50,000 medical groups, and more than 3,400 dialysis centers and 8,300 pharmacies. Combined, the eHealth Exchange supports more than 109 million patients across private, military, veteran, and public care settings.
“We’re experiencing phenomenal growth in building seamless, nationwide health data exchange that unifies providers and patients through a common set of technology standards and rules,” Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project, said in a statement. “Our comprehensive approach allows health records to follow the patient wherever they receive care, in an integrated way. Using our Carequality framework and eHealth Exchange network, physicians can access a more complete health history while treating patients. This enables them to improve better care coordination for patients by leveraging health IT interoperability.”
